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The phone is a remarkably complex, simple device,
and very rarely ever needs repairs, once you fix them. Dan/Panther

I found this treasure at a local antique store a few years ago. For once, the maker mounted the lamp by using a bracket behind the phone and didn't drill through the top. Aside from two screw holes mounting the base of the phone to the wooden lamp base, and the usual polishing off the nickel, the phone was left intact.

I've had that same thought for a while now. It would make sense to separate out the lamp phones from all of the other hideous phones into their own page. I'd bet there are a lot more out there because more and more are surfacing and most of them without bulbs, harps or shades meaning they haven't been used as a lamp in quite some time, but finders see they bring money on eBay.

DONE!

I just split all of the "Lamp Phone" posts out of the "Hideous Phones" thread and merged them into Brinybay's "Lamp Phone Atrocities" thread.

Frankly, I find nothing offensive about turning phones into lamps, or into whatever for that matter.

Some of you are probably tired of hearing my opinion on Lamp Phones but here goes again.

While it is upsetting to see a telephone butchered into a lamp we have to remember this one thing. In all liklihood the phone would not still be with us if someone hadn't turned it into a lamp which is what saved it from the scrap metal furnaces. So we need to be happy that it is still here with us and see what we can do to restore it.

I too kind of like some of the lamp phones and have four of them that come to mind at the moment. None are phones that I converted to lamps but rather I bought or acquired them already converted into lamps. None of them are rare hard to get phones either. I have 2 AE 40's, an AE 50 and an AE 1A that are lamps.

I agree with Terry on his theory that the phones would be long gone if not turned into lamps. I would like to share two stories:

Story 1:Here is my theory. I once had a book written for "handymen" in the 50's on how to turn "outdated useless" furniture into "modern and updated" furniture. It showed a man dismantling and basically destroying BEAUTIFUL art deco furniture and creating "50's modern" furniture out of it. At the time to see this beautiful furniture destroyed broke my heart. I bet somewhere out there someone wrote a similar book for telephones and that is why we see what we see now. These phones were considered garbage at the time and would be gone had they not been "preserved" by "handymen".

Story 2:

I met a man about 10 years ago selling telephones when I started collecting on a more serious level. He told me when he was younger he was responsible for cleaning out old warehouses. One of his customers had a factory that had about 500-750 302's that needed to be removed. Again these were considered garbage at the time. He told me he personally sold them in bulk to a construction company and they used them as landfill and cemented them in building foundations. Tell me that doesn't break your heart. "yesterdays garbage" Moral of the story: save your modular 2500's as they may be tomorrows 302's.

Many of the Lamp phones or at least the idea for them originated with Junior Achievement programs operated by some Telco's. Youngsters were given some business training by doing projects such as turning the Telco's old retired telephones into things like Lamps and then selling them to the public to gain business experience.

I have seen articles and pictures about this but I am not sure where now. Maybe someone has something they can add about this.

I think that Old Phones and Phone Lamps were used as retirement gifts for Telco Employees.

Many of the Lamp phones or at least the idea for them originated with Junior Achievement programs operated by some Telco's. Youngsters were given some business training by doing projects such as turning the Telco's old retired telephones into things like Lamps and then selling them to the public to gain business experience.

I have seen articles and pictures about this but I am not sure where now. Maybe someone has something they can add about this.

I think that Old Phones and Phone Lamps were used as retirement gifts for Telco Employees.

Terry

Terry, I am not sure if the kids in Junior Achievement originated the idea but I think they were enterprising enough to popularize it. I was able to find that as far back as 1955 they were making “telephone lamps.” The article below shows Junior Achievement making them in 57. In the 80’s they, JA, did the same thing with old fire extinguishers. I also found an example, from 1972, were the telephone lamps were given out to retirees of the phone system. See below.Prior to this idea of making old obsolete phones into lamps (the 1950’s) a “telephone lamp” was a small lamp placed on the small telephone table that most American homes had. I have included an ad for these, from 1935, in the pdf file below with several other items for telephone lamps. Contrarian to the thinking here, and judging by the number of examples found in this discussion, I would say that telephone lamps are a whole collecting field unto themselves.